time for more helpful tips that i am enjoying and wanting to share:
plastic is resource-intensive to produce and can be tricky to recycle, so shop with an eye to avoiding it. reuse any plastic containers you bring into your home for storing food or other items. if you're drowning in tubs, see if you can donate some to a local school or art center.
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{a side note: richland recycles some plastics, but not all of them. look for the number on the bottom of a plastic container. richland will accept only #1 or #2 plastics. unfortunately, many, many plastics are #5 or #6 and those have to be thrown away! uggh!}
go around the house and take inventory of every kind of paper you use, including paper towels, toilet paper, tissues, paper napkins, notepaper, wrapping paper, paper lunch sacks, paper drinking cups, and more. resolve to use up what you've got - and recycle, when appropriate - then look for non-paper and/or recycled alternatives. make sure that everyone who does the shopping knows about the new house rules.******
{a side note: by using cloth napkins, cloth lunch sacks, and using dishes, we have cut waaayyyy back on our paper products!}.
it's just not true that shutting off your work computer at night is too hard on the machine, yet the myth persists. make sure you power down - and unplug power strips, where applicable - every time you leave the office at night or for the weekend. and whenever you're leaving your desk for a while, turn off your monitor, which uses much more energy than your hard drive.
when you use the atm, decline a receipt. keep track of your bank balance online instead. every bit of paper saved (along with the chemicals used to bleach it) makes a difference, especially when you think of how many receipts you could rack up over time.
drinking tap water is so much better for the planet than buying bottled water. start with a visit to www.ewg.org/tapwater to see how your state's water rates and learn about possible contaminants, then buy a filtration system accordingly. if your water gets good marks, and your biggest concern is the omnipresent chlorine, try filling a pitcher and letting it sit, uncovered, on the counter overnight. the chlorine will evaporate- and later, when you stash it in the fridge, a (covered) pitcher of water saves energy by helping to regulate the temperature.
